Rhetoric and Composition
1. Choose one historical period (e.g. Classical, Renaissance, Enlightenment) and explain, using two or three authors as examples, how the rhetorical theory of the period is related to its socio-historical context.
2. Discuss (1) three or four of what you consider to be the most significant issues relating to basic writing courses in contemporary universities, (2) your theoretical assessment of these issues, using authors such as Shaughnessy, Elbow, and Bartholomae as touchstones, then (3) relate these issues to your own pedagogical practices in English 101.
3. Compare and contrast Burke’s theory of consubstantiality with Morrison’s theory of Africanist presence. What do such rhetoric and literary theories add to our knowledge of semiotics? What implications do they carry for multiculturalism in the composition classroom?
4. Discuss the rhetoric of education and how it represents differences in power, gender, and class. Draw on several different (at least three) kinds of educational models to answer this question. What are the epistemological and pedagogical consequences of these different models?
5. Discuss the role and function of invention in the composing process from classical times to more current rhetorical and composition theory. Draw upon at least one classical and one other rhetorician not of this century to answer this question.
6. A lasting debate among compositionists concerns the overall purpose and goals of an introductory writing course. Drawing on the work of at least three theorists on your list, discuss both sides of the debate over the kinds of skills students need to learn in this key course. You may want to consider who is the source of authority for each of these thinkers as well as the shape and content of the kind of course each might teach and why.
7. How would you describe a feminist discourse or a “woman’s way of knowing”? What are the specific language features that mark it as feminist? As a teacher, how do you acknowledge this discourse, along with discourses of other marginalized groups in your own classroom?
8. Consider Paulo Freire as a pragmatist. Define what you mean by pragmatism. What aspects of his theory and practice might best illustrate pragmatism? What have been some of the critiques of his work? How do you draw on Freire in your own classroom?
9. Aristotle believed that a speaker’s voice was a tool for persuasion. Contemporary theorists in composition and feminism see voice in different and often conflicting ways. Using Aristotle or one other classical theorist to begin your discussion, analyze how the work of at least two contemporary thinkers explores the concept of voice and how their work expands and extends Aristotle’s. Some possibilities: Friere, Elbow, Belenky, Jarratt.
10. How is education as liberation different from traditional models of education, called by Freire education for domestication or by Marxists education as reproduction? Choose three figures that consider education as liberatory. Freire, Emerson, Hooks, Shaughnessy are some possibilities. Discuss their theories, perhaps differences among them as well as connections, and the pedagogical practices that support them.
11. College composition courses have historically focused on teaching “academic discourse.” Define the term, its features, and the assumptions that shape it by referring to compositionists such as Bartholomae, Bizzell, Rose, Corbett or others. Describe the problems you see with this focus and with the “expressive discourse” model of Elbow and Murray. What alternative curriculum might you offer as a way of shaping a freshman writing program? Provide both theoretical and practical support for your model.
12. How has feminist theory, developmental psychology, and reading theory (among other theories if you wish) affected the way you view education in a women’s college? Are there special methods, contents, approaches that women’s education should focus on? Are there dangers in single sex education for women’s learning?
13. Design a group of tasks for a first year composition class using a 19th-century American novel which will integrate students’ understanding of reading and writing. Frame your plan around those reading and writing theorists who have helped you think most clearly about the intimate, symbiotic relationship between the two.
14. Given your own experience at the community college and your reading in the area of basic writing, discuss three theorists who you feel have contributed best to the conversation about understanding and empowering basic writers. You may want to consider the work of Janet Emig, Mina Shaughnessy, and Paulo Freier.
15. The question of “What is Rhetoric” has been debated from Isocrates to current times. Select three different rhetoricians who have approached this question from three different paradigms. One thinker should be a classical rhetorician with the two others being your own choices.
16. Composition has been studied in many different ways. Discuss three key studies that have influenced the way you have come to think about the field of Composition Studies. These studies should reflect very different research strategies—cognitive, historical, ethnographic, etc.
17. As this year’s assistant to the Director of the Writing Center, discuss the theories of teaching writing that most directly apply to your role as consultant and/or as a possible faculty member concerned with Writing Center administration in the future. Which composition theorists have been most helpful to you in your present role or in imagining a writing center in a different setting? Select three or four theorists to discuss, including Mina Shaughnessy.
18. Important theorists in composition and rhetoric starting with Plato and extending into present day post-modern thinkers have examined both the power and the limitations of language. Select two thinkers before 1900 and two after this time to illustrate different language theories. Show how these thinkers see language as representative of the real world and the life of the mind.
19. Rhetoric has always been concerned with epistemological issues about the nature of truth. Trace some of the major shifts in ideas about truth starting with the work of the Sophists and moving toward deconstruction and post-modernism. Select at least two thinkers who worked before the 1900’s and two more contemporary rhetoricians. Some thinkers whose ideas might be helpful to discuss include: Nietzche, Foucault, and Bakhtin, but there are many others that contribute to this ongoing debate.
20. Literacy has been defined in many different ways: as cultural literacy, as critical literacy, as a kind of identity kit and as basic skills. Discuss the ideas of at least three different literacy theorists, drawing on some of the many ethnographic studies that have been done on literacy as part of your discussion. Finally write about your own notions of literacy and how they inform the way you teach composition and literature courses at the university level.
21. Examine how two of the following disciplines have contributed to the study of rhetoric and composition theory: cognitive studies, psychology, psychoanalytic theory, postmodern theory, anthropology, education, pragmatism and logic. In your answer make one connection to composition and another to rhetoric. Include writers in or outside our field who make particular use of cross-disciplinary perspectives (education, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, physics, are some possibilities).
22. Consider several pedagogical strategies you may have used in teaching (journals, free writing, collaboration, film, conferences, portfolios) in terms of their potential benefits for nurturing diversity in your classroom and for establishing gender equity. Write about at least three of these strategies that seem most useful, explaining how you would use them in a beginning writing course, how they serve the purpose of accommodating diversity and gender concerns, and the theorists/teachers who have helped you think most effectively about implementing these strategies.
23. Design an undergraduate course that introduces students to theories of rhetoric and composition. What readings should be introduced first in such a course and why? What sequence of readings might be followed in this ten week introductory course and why? What kinds of writing assignments would be most useful in such a course and why?
24. Drawing on the work of reader response theorists (including IA Richards, the forerunner of this theory in some ways) discuss how their ideas inform the teaching of both reading and writing. Select at least three different theorists and give specific examples of the ways that their ideas inform classroom pedagogy.
25. Composition, rhetoric, and literary studies have displayed an intense interest in the learning of marginalized students. Imagine that you are planning an introductory writing course in a large urban university that services a multi-ethnic and multi-aged population. What key thinkers would you call upon to help you imagine and design a curriculum for a population of marginalized students? Give a rationale for your choices. Select at least three theorists. You might consider but are not limited to Freire, Cixous, Shaughnessy, Rose, Heath and Gates.
26. In our rhetoric and composition program, we emphasize the role of the teacher-scholar, how that role is developed, how it influences others, and how it reflects aspects of the self. Choose three thinkers from the reading list and explore what they see as the position, responsibility and liabilities of the teacher-scholar. How do your own theories of teaching and scholarship fit into this image of the teacher-scholar? You may want to consider but are not limited to Emerson, Foucault, Isocrates, and/or Janet Emig.
27. Language is power. Teaching writing involves helping students to become empowered. What language and literacy theorists have most affected or shaped how you have come to think about the production of knowledge in different times and contexts? Draw on at least three language theorists from different time periods that interest you but do not repeat someone you have discussed in another question. You may want to consider Plato, Vygotsky, Heath, Shaughnessy, Cixous, Bakhtin, Elbow, Emig, and K.B. LeFevre.
28. Teaching writing is very much about teaching reading as well since both of these processes require a dialogic and reflexive stance that the writer/reader adopts towards his or her subject and/or audience. Using the work of three theorists, including at least one compositionist, discuss the critical and useful connections that can be made between reading theory and the composition classroom. You may want to consider Rosenblatt, Iser, Bakhtin, Eagleton, or Smith among those you discuss but the choice is really yours.
29. In Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, Volosinov argues that “the utterance is a social phenomenon.” Discuss how Volosinov/Bakhtin center their theories on the social nature of language. Select two other theorists who extend or contrast with Bakhtin/Volosinov’s position. Identify how all these theorists are alike or different, and finally consider the implications of these theories for composition pedagogy.
30. Select any three rhetoricians (on our list) whose work would show them as both a pragmatist and a liberatory educator. Discuss the texts you would assign as well as useful criticisms of their works. In thinking through the reading list, suggest some other theorists whose work could be nicely paired with Freire’s. Include a rationale for such a course as well.
31. In Rereading the Sophists, Susan Jarrett offers an alternative approach to argument. After explaining her narrative-based theory, contrast it with the approach of at least two other theorists. Here you may use Burke, Perelman or any choices of your own.
32. E.M. Forster wrote: “How do I know what I think ‘till I see what I say?” This quote by Forster expresses a rather narrow view of the relationship between thought and language. Choose several theorists (no more that three) who have written about this language/thought idea in ways that complicate our understanding. Describe the argument of each theorist and contrast his or her views, taking a stand for the theory that best compliments your own way of looking at this issue.
33. Second language instruction presents special issues in the teaching of writing. Which composition theorists help us think about the teaching of English as a second language in the most pragmatic ways? Select those thinkers whose work will translate most effectively into a Hungarian ESL writing class.
34. What is the role of the teacher in the language class as presented by three different thinkers from three different centuries? In your answer consider factors such as issues of power and authority, response to student texts, kinds of assignments, and ways of structuring the classroom to encourage learning.
35. Design a unit of study for a beginning composition class that includes several types of reading and writing assignments. Include one novel or nonfiction work, more than one kind of writing task, at least two different types of reading tasks, a group activity and a computer assisted exercise. What is the philosophy that would underlie your choices and decisions about this curriculum? How would you help students understand the importance of integrating these materials?
36. Choose two recent (twentieth century) rhetoric/composition theorists and explore how the writers you’ve chosen exemplify the continuing influence of classical rhetoric. You might hinge your discussion on the varying ways the classical and modern-day rhetoricians you choose conceive of any of the following issues: form, truth/reality, audience, ethos, process.
37. You might wish someday to make an argument for popular culture and its literature to be included in an English department curriculum. Consider theorists of reading, writing, literature and literacy who might help you make such an argument. Discuss both their positions and how those positions link to the viability of popular culture as a medium for students’ learning. Choose at least three theorists to help you make your popular culture claim.
38. “Naming begins the chaos,” says Ann Berthoff. Discuss the uses of naming and chaos in the writing process you support in your pedagogy and in the writing assignments you ask your students to accomplish. Refer to other composition theories as well as Berthoff if you wish in your discussion: Elbow, Shaughnessy, Bruffee, Heath, or others.
39. Demonstrate the value of critical theory for analyzing popular culture.
40. Choosing three of the following writers explore the implications of anti-foundationalism for the study of literature: Fish, Eagleton, Derrida, Foucault, Burke.
41. Select three different models of literacy from your reading to discuss which include different and sometimes overlapping fields (sociolinguistics, rhetoric, early childhood learning, composition, feminist theory, etc). Discuss the models themselves and the kinds of learning processes or definitions of literacy that are implied by each. What are the pedagogical and rhetorical consequences of each model? Which one do you find most satisfactory and why?